Ly Tran is just a toddler in 1993 when she and her family immigrate from a small town along the Mekong river in Vietnam to a two-bedroom railroad apartment in Queens. Ly’s father, a former lieutenant in the South Vietnamese army, spent nearly a decade as a POW, and their resettlement is made possible through a humanitarian program run by the US government. Soon after they arrive, Ly joins her parents and three older brothers sewing ties and cummerbunds piece-meal on their living room floor to make ends meet.
As they navigate this new landscape, Ly finds herself torn between two worlds. She knows she must honor her parents’ Buddhist faith and contribute to the family livelihood, working long hours at home and eventually as a manicurist alongside her mother at a nail salon in Brooklyn that her parents take over. But at school, Ly feels the mounting pressure to blend in.
A growing inability to see the blackboard presents new challenges, especially when her father forbids her from getting glasses, calling her diagnosis of poor vision a government conspiracy. His frightening temper and paranoia leave a mark on Ly’s sense of self. Who is she outside of everything her family expects of her?
New York City Book Awards Hornblower Award Winner
One of Vogue and NPR’s Best Books of the Year
"[An] unsentimental yet deeply moving examination of filial bond, displacement, war trauma, and poverty. Ostensibly an immigrant success story, Tran's narrative power lies in its nuanced celebration of filial devotion that withstands the enormous cost of the American dream ... The dilapidated nail salon in a racially volatile Brooklyn neighborhood that Tran's parents came to own after the end of their sweatshop era — with its filing sticks as tools of the trade — witnessed their stark tribulations as well as the wondrous resilience of their immigrant selves. In the end, Tran's empathy and her parents' appreciation of her filial love cemented the emotional bricks that steady their seemingly tenuous hold on this unaccustomed earth."
—NPR
“House of Sticks is a book that will assault and warm your heart at the same time—a classic immigrant tale, told from the perspective of a Vietnamese child who settled with her family in New York City in the early ‘90s with little to no knowledge about life in America… But it is also much more: a coming of age story, A New York hustle, a battle with a father who not only maintains an ironclad sense of filial duty, but also, fueled by his paranoia, exercises irrational control over things like vision correction. (In another elegant examination of absence, the book recounts what a fundamental challenge it is to move through the world without basic ability to see.)”
—Vogue, Best Books to Read 2021
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ly Tran graduated from Columbia University in 2014 with a degree in creative writing and linguistics. She has received fellowships from MacDowell, Art Omi, and Yaddo. House of Sticks is her first book.
"Out of heartbreaking inherited trauma, Tran discovers joy in new relationships and the grace for one of the most beautiful scenes of parent-child rapprochement I’ve ever read. Her new eyesight lets Tran see, most importantly, 'the voice I’d been unable to access all my life...on the page.' Words are strong enough to contain a life’s story, holding together all the fractures in remembering and telling."
—Commonweal Magazine
"A moving recount of how Tran and her family immigrated from a small town in Vietnam to a two-bedroom railroad apartment in Queens, and how she forged her path in a new culture."
—Marie Claire, 20 New Books by Asian Authors to Get Excited About
"Tran found herself pulled in myriad directions by her desires: to please her family, to fit in with her friends, to chart her own course, to belong. She tells her own coming-of-age story in House of Sticks."
—Bustle, 44 New Must-Read Books Out This June
“In this moving debut memoir, Ly Tran recounts emigrating from Vietnam to the United States with her family in the early 1990s. It’s in New York City that she comes into her own, at once attempting to fit into this new world as well as honor deep traditions, the need to contribute to the family and her father’s resistance to new ways.”
—Ms. Magazine
“A special memoir in which, though circumstances are difficult, love wins out…beautiful and inspirational.”
—Fredricksburg Free-Lance Star
"In this coming-of-age memoir, author Ly Tran recounts how her family immigrated from Vietnam to Queens when she was a child, along with their troubles trying to make ends meet."
—NBCNews.com,10 Best Beach Reads for Summer
“[Tran’s] deeply compelling memoir tells the story of growing up torn between two worlds: that of her hardworking Buddhist parents with sky-high expectations and the one she wants to discover for herself in America.”
—HelloGiggles, 10 Best New Books to Add to Your June Reading List
“In her phenomenal debut, House of Sticks: A Memoir, Ly Tran mines both trauma and love from her coming of age as a young Vietnamese immigrant to the United States … Her vivid, unadorned narration yields a painful but powerful exploration of the struggle to find a sense of self within a family at the cross-section of cultures, and Tran's story is impossible to forget.”
—Shelf Awareness
"[An] emotional experience in the form of beautifully heartbreaking prose."
—Off the Shelf
"Tracing the paths of immigration and poverty, Tran’s moving and exceptionally readable memoir is at once heartbreaking, shocking, and hopeful ... Tran is exceptional at telling her story with honesty and without judgment. Readers who loved Tara Westover's Educated (2018) will find a similarly compelling memoir of resilience in a not-often-seen America."
—Booklist, starred review
"I guarantee that you will never see the nail salon technician in the same way after reading Ly Tran’s memoir. House of Sticks is a powerful report from the trenches of the immigrant experience and what it really means to become an American. It’s Tran’s story, but it’s also the story of this country—and in this day and age we would do well not to forget that."
—Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will be Free and Brief Encounters With the Enemy
“A special memoir in which, though circumstances are difficult, love wins out…beautiful and inspirational.”
—Fredricksburg Free-Lance Star
"In this coming-of-age memoir, author Ly Tran recounts how her family immigrated from Vietnam to Queens when she was a child, along with their troubles trying to make ends meet."
—NBCNews.com,10 Best Beach Reads for Summer
“[Tran’s] deeply compelling memoir tells the story of growing up torn between two worlds: that of her hardworking Buddhist parents with sky-high expectations and the one she wants to discover for herself in America.”
—HelloGiggles, 10 Best New Books to Add to Your June Reading List
“In her phenomenal debut, House of Sticks: A Memoir, Ly Tran mines both trauma and love from her coming of age as a young Vietnamese immigrant to the United States … Her vivid, unadorned narration yields a painful but powerful exploration of the struggle to find a sense of self within a family at the cross-section of cultures, and Tran's story is impossible to forget.”
—Shelf Awareness
"[An] emotional experience in the form of beautifully heartbreaking prose."
—Off the Shelf
"Tracing the paths of immigration and poverty, Tran’s moving and exceptionally readable memoir is at once heartbreaking, shocking, and hopeful ... Tran is exceptional at telling her story with honesty and without judgment. Readers who loved Tara Westover's Educated (2018) will find a similarly compelling memoir of resilience in a not-often-seen America."
—Booklist, starred review
"I guarantee that you will never see the nail salon technician in the same way after reading Ly Tran’s memoir. House of Sticks is a powerful report from the trenches of the immigrant experience and what it really means to become an American. It’s Tran’s story, but it’s also the story of this country—and in this day and age we would do well not to forget that."
—Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, author of When Skateboards Will be Free and Brief Encounters With the Enemy